“Exactly what it looks like.”

Impatience evident, the deputy shifted his weight. “What’s in it, Mr. Mallett?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t ask.”

The first statement was true, the second a lie, and gauging by the deputy’s dubious expression, he knew it was. “The doctor didn’t volunteer it?”

“No.”

“Is that typical?”

“In my business, there’s no such thing as typical.”

“Who dispatched you?”

“The name of the company is Dash-It-All.” Rye gave him the contact information, and he wrote it down. “If you don’t mind,” Rye said, “I’d like to call the owner myself and be the one to break the news about his plane.”

“I do mind.”

He gave Rye a smile that Rye would’ve enjoyed wreaking havoc on. Instead, he gave an indifferent shrug and nodded down at the notepad. “You’ve got his number.”

Rawlins called over another deputy, who was older but apparently lower in the department’s pecking order. Rawlins ripped off the sheet of paper that had Dash’s phone numbers on it and gave it to the other officer. He muttered instructions to him that Rye couldn’t hear and pretended disinterest in.

Before the other deputy moved away, he said to Rawlins in an undertone, “Know who she is?” He bobbed his head toward Brynn.

Rawlins leaned back in order to see around the other deputy to where Brynn was being questioned. “Should I?”

“Wes O’Neal’s daughter.”

Rawlins’s eyes narrowed on her. “You don’t say.”

“Wasn’t sure at first, but then I heard her name. I’d see her around the department when she was just a kid. In and out of there a lot.” The older deputy withdrew, presumably to phone Dash.

Rye’s curiosity got the better of him. “Who’s Wes O’Neal?”

Rawlins said, “You’re not from around here, or you’d likely know. Where are you from, Mr. Mallett?”

“Not from around here.” Rawlins gave him a baleful look, and Rye decided that annoying him further wasn’t worth the time it would cost him. “Everywhere and nowhere. Air Force brat. We moved every couple of years, so I don’t claim a home town or even a home state.”

“Where do you live now?”

He rented an apartment in Oklahoma City only so he would have a mailing address. He had no personal attachment to the city. He’d chosen it for convenience. It was in the center of the country, making it easy to get into on his way back from somewhere and easy to get out of on his way to somewhere else.

He hadn’t really lied to Brynn when she’d asked where he lived. The rental was more a storage unit for his few belongings than it was a residence. As often as not, he was far from there, sleeping in a cheap motel or in the back room of an FBO until somebody needed a pilot on short notice.

Like tonight.

His eyes were drawn again to Brynn. She was talking, making small gestures. She reached up and looped a hank of hair behind her ear. As she listened to the deputy’s next question, her teeth tugged at the corner of her lower lip, like she was nervous. Like she was lying.

“Address?”

Rawlins’s question brought Rye back. He provided Rawlins with the address of his apartment. The deputy added it to his notepad. “After you crashed, what happened?”

Rye explained how he’d managed to get out of the airplane. “I was trying to figure out which way back to the road when Dr. O’Neal showed up.” Leaving out how sneakily she’d acted when she found the plane, he related the rest.

“We got to her car, discovered the damage to the wheel, had no choice but to walk here. Found Brady White. That’s it. Just like I told you at the start. That’s everything I know. So can we wrap this up?”

But Rawlins wasn’t finished with him. “You said you were on the radio with Brady. What was his last transmission?”

“He asked if I was nervous.”

“About what?”

Rye smiled.

“What’s funny?”

“That’s what I came back to Brady with. My exact words. He was asking if I was nervous about the landing. I indicated I wasn’t. He said I was due a couple of beers. That’s the last I heard from him. I transmitted that I saw the runway lights, but he didn’t respond.”

“Why do you think?”

“I think because he’d been knocked cold. The radio wasn’t on when Dr. O’Neal and I got here. I checked.”

Rawlins said, “Okay,” but not in a way that sounded like it was okay.

He then went through a series of routine questions: Had Rye seen any other persons or vehicles; had he touched or disturbed anything; did it appear to him that anything had been disturbed; had Brady White said anything? He answered no to all.

The older deputy came back and reported to Rawlins. “Mallett here checks out. That Dash character went nuts when I told him about his plane, but I calmed him down. He’s emailing you the flight plan that Mallett filed, along with the paperwork on his cargo.”

Rawlins pulled out his phone. As he accessed his email, he said to Rye, “Why didn’t you give me all this?”

“You didn’t ask for it.”

Rawlins scrolled through the documents and stopped on the air bill. “Under client’s name it says Dr. Lambert.”

“I assumed that’s who Dr. O’Neal was till she told me different.”

“She came on Dr. Lambert’s behalf?”

Brynn had said to him that she’d come in Dr. Lambert’s place. There was a fine distinction between in his place and on his behalf. But Rye nodded in response to the deputy’s question, because when you didn’t have a freaking clue how to answer, a nonverbal reply was the safest.

“Black metal box,” the deputy said, still reading from the shipping form attached to the email. “Doesn’t say what’s in it.”

Rye gave another shrug. “Like I told you.”

The deputy closed out the email and slid his phone back into the pocket of his puffy jacket. “You and Dr. O’Neal know each other before tonight?”

“No.”

Rawlins tilted his chin down in apparent doubt.

“No,” Rye repeated. “Never heard of her. Never saw her before she came walking out of the foggy woods. Didn’t even know she was a woman. When I was told the client was a Dr. Lambert, I automatically figured a man.”

“Feminists would jump all over that.”

“I’m not proud of it. I’m just telling you that’s how it was.”

The deputy tried to stare a lie out of him, but ironically that answer was the unvarnished truth, so Rye stared back and didn’t blink. Rawlins was first to back down. He used the toe of his boot to nudge the leather duffel at Rye’s feet. “What’s in the bag?”

“It’s my flight bag.”

“Not what I asked.”

“Help yourself. But there’s a nine-millimeter in there. I have a permit.”

Rawlins extended his open palm. Rye pulled his wallet from his back pocket and produced the concealed carry license. The deputy inspected it as though Rye was on a terrorist watch list, several times comparing the photo on the license to Rye’s face, then handed back the wallet, squatted down, and unzipped the bag.

He mumbled something about the contents looking like a hardware store wrapped in leather, but, right off, he located the zippered pocket with the Glock inside. He stood up with it in his hand and looked it over. “There’s a bullet chambered.”

Since he’d stated the obvious, Rye didn’t say anything.

“How come?” the deputy asked.

“Bears.”

“Bears?”

Rye hitched his thumb up toward the painting on the wall behind him. “Before I saw Dr. O’Neal’s flashlight, I heard thrashing in the woods, something coming my way. I didn’t want to come face-to-face with a bear or any other kind of predator. So I chambered a bullet just in case.”

It was a logical explanation. Which wasn’t to say that Rawlins believed a word of it. But before he could test its veracity with a follow-up question, the deputy who’d been questioning Brynn called, “Rawlins? Talk to you a sec?”

“Stay here,” he said to Rye as he moved away to join his partner.

The crowd of personnel had thinned out. Apparently they’d come to the conclusion that the crime of the century hadn’t been committed on their watch after all. Of those who remained, one was shuffling through White’s paperwork as though to determine if any of it was relevant and would shed light on who had walked in and clouted him for no apparent reason.

Another was dusting the desk for fingerprints. When his interest moved to the collector’s items on the shelf above it, and he was about to reach for the airplane model, Rye pushed away from the wall. “Hey! Don’t mess with that.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned toward him. Rye looked at Rawlins, who’d been huddled with the other deputy, comparing notes. Rye said, “Whoever hit him didn’t take time to handle his stuff. Leave it alone.”

Rawlins took stock of the articles on the shelf, considered it, then shook his head at the fingerprinter. Everyone went back to what they’d been doing.

Rye resettled himself against the wall and looked toward Brynn. She, who like everyone else had turned when he admonished the man doing the fingerprinting, was regarding him curiously.

3:21 a.m.